Pripyat, once a model working class city built for the employees of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, is now the world’s largest ghost town. Crumbling socialist era apartment blocks tower over what remains of a city founded in 1970 and evacuated on April 26th, 1986. The city was once home to 49,000 residents, it boasted over 13,000 apartment units, 25 shops, […]
Romania’s President-elect, Klaus Johannis, might want to send a thank you card to the 3 million Romanian citizens living and working abroad. And also to Transylvania’s Hungarian population. Without them, Prime Minister Victor Ponta would have been able to change political chairs and become the country’s new left-leaning president, replacing Traian Băsescu, who was completing his second and final term […]
Open hostilities between the Ukrainian central government and the breakaway eastern province resumed in last week, with the heaviest shelling offensive since the crisis began earlier this year. Russia’s role in this conflict continues to exacerbate the ongoing struggle by providing financing and supplies to the pro-Russian separatist groups based in the Donetsk region. The Ukrainian central government continues its […]
The main Hungarian candidate in the first round of voting in Romania’s presidential election – Hunor Kelemen of the centrist Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) – received only 3.50% of the vote on Sunday, but came out on top in the country’s two Hungarian majority counties, namely: Hargita (Harghita) and Kovászna (Covasna). The right-wing Transylvanian Hungarian People’s Party […]
Ukraine has been invaded by Russia. Ukraine is being dismembered. What is happening is not an intervention or an incursion. The Kremlin’s black deeds are not a “stealth war,” nor is this any kind of Cold War. It’s bloodthirsty hot. Ukraine’s Crimea has been under Russian military occupation since March. Heavy weapons fired from inside the Russian Federation are killing […]
While the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ parliamentary secretary, Péter Szijjártó, tries to discourage any further European Union sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the Együtt-PM liberal-green opposition party took to the streets of Budapest, in order to protest the second Russian invasion of Ukraine this year. Demonstrators marched to Russia’s embassy in the Hungarian capital and the protest included key […]
Hungary’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs continued to issue milquetoast statements on the deepening crisis in Ukraine, following confirmation by NATO that Russian forces were operating in the Donetsk region of the country, and had helped pro-Russian rebels open up a second front in the southeast (along the coast of the Sea of Azov) against Ukrainian forces. “We are closely monitoring […]
A statue of Vladimir I. Lenin that stood in East Berlin for over two decades and which was dismantled and removed in 1991 was thought to have been buried in pieces in the Köpenick Forest, located to the southeast of the German capital. The monument’s 3.5 ton granite head was believed to have been buried there as well, but when a […]
The satellite news channel RT (previously known as Russia Today) is not best known for its balanced, dispassionate journalism. It was once referred to by US Secretary of State John Kerry as a “propaganda bullhorn” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. (The State Department seemed especially vexed by RT’s continued assertion following the ousting of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, that the revolt had […]
Last week Georgia’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili showed up at Viktor Orbán’s doorstep in Budapest. He came with a video crew. Mr. Saakashvili is in a peculiar situation, he is on the run. He left Georgia in mid-November 2013, two days before his presidential term officially expired. Georgian authorities recently brought charges against him under part three of article 333 of […]
